Google has filed a patent for a new method for controlling computers and other devices by pulling funny faces.
In the future, Chocolate Factory fans might be able to unlock their gizmos by sticking out their tongue, rather than by having to remember passwords, according to a new patent.
Android users can currently use a …

fluttering eyelashes also seems to get past sentries [Re: I claim prior art]

Re: I claim prior art

It is a totally useless concept, try gurning the same stupid face twice in a row.

By the time you have managed to unlock the phone the police will have arrived to help you find your way back to your sheltered accommodation, social services will be looking for a placement for you.

It's bad enough seeing people talking into phones the size of a briefcase, but now doing it with stupid faces? Imagine being in a business meeting, 'just need to check with my boss, only take a second'......

Re: I claim prior art

And again: Biometry is not suitable for Authorization

A common requirement for secure systems is to change your login credentials regularly, and to never ever use the same for 2 services. How are you going to do that with biometry? Are you going to have multiple faces?

Further more you should keep your login credentials secret... so I suppose you are supposed to wear a face shackle or something.

Seriously, how hard is it to have a display displaying the required facial expression?

Re: Speech Recognition

Re: Speech Recognition

Because no one has the technology to record your voice if they happen to be around you unlocking it?

This is a waste of time. Biometrics is never secure by itself. That's why all high security systems that use biometrics also require something else like a password or smartcard - in some cases all three!

The point of locking your phone and unlocking it with your face, fingerprint or voice isn't that it is super secure, but that it is more convenient than typing in a pin or password. And more secure, unless you're one of the paranoid folks who won't unlock your phone with someone standing behind you. Google is just going to give people a false sense of security on top of making them look like they've having a seizure trying to reproduce the right face.

This could have an unintended side benefit, however. That of reducing drunk dialing/drunk texting, since drunk people might not be able to re-create the proper facial expressions and end up locked out of their phone until they sober up! :)

Then I came down with Bell's Palsy. (Temporary paralysis of one side of the face.) It usually wears off after a few weeks, but those weeks could be rendered mighty inconvenient by a sulking smartphone!

Entertaining indeed

It sounds absolutely entertaining, though it will not help solve the issue of vulnerable passwords. Any personal verification solution which requires a self-rescue password (a password for self-rescue in case of false rejection) can by no means be an alternative to passwords.

Password

Iris recognition? That would be closer but still suffers the same problem.

Passwords serve an entirely different purpose to biometrics. If my brother and I agree on a password, we can do it without the knowledge of any outside entity. And whenever we use the password, we can protect ourselves from revealing it so long as we have half a brain and use secured devices (using unsecured devices makes EVERYTHING moot anyway). Additionally, if under duress*, we can choose to withhold the password and there's not much that can be done about it. At all.

The same is not true of just about any biometric that you care to name. Hence the reason that passwords are still used in this day and age of modern technology.

* I was once asked to reveal the domain administrator password to a school network, by a deputy head of the school, about a month after I'd left. I was quite adamant that it was none of his business (it provided access to things like payroll, for a start). Fortunately, I'd left the job by then and already furnished the headteacher and (at the head's request) one of the school governors who worked in IT with a CD containing all the passwords, logins and required information to run the entire network.

I referred the deputy head REPEATEDLY to the head and refused to reveal any details to him. He tried several times, got angry, threatened all sorts against me - even accused me of breach of contract for not revealing them. He was told, repeatedly, where to go - i.e., the Head, who could furnish him with any details he needed. I don't know what happened - and don't care. I did my job, protected the data under my control, fulfilled my employment contract, and did not break the law by revealing access details to someone who I couldn't verify should have access (if the deputy should have permission - why didn't he just go to the head, as instructed, who could give him the CD?). But I imagine that it's not difficult to conceive of a situation where you are forced to give up such details even if it might be illegal, especially if you aren't leaving the job, etc.

Oh, and what did the deputy want the *DOMAIN* password for? To install a program as administrator, so that a child could run it, because he believed that administrator access was necessary to make it read MP3's when the software clearly stated that it *COULDN'T* read MP3's, only WMA's. He'd bought MP3 recorders and a WMA software suite without bothering to check compatibility first, then blamed me for not being able to get it to work (I did, but it obviously involved a conversion step that I automated as much as possible) - one of the many reasons I started to make my way out of the school.

Passwords are BETTER than biometrics. If I don't want to give you my password, you won't get it from me (whether you can get it from somewhere else, that's a different question). Biometrics - that's just not true.

The main benefit to face unlock was giving the user an 'instant' at-a-glance access to their phone. Yet rather than just accept it's not particularly secure they attempt to "fix" it by adding a whole face pulling process that entirely defeats the only original benefit. Sometimes it's just better to do nothing.